oodlessly eliminated. Man's civilization held nothing that the
star men wanted, but man's planet--that was a different story! Truly
the aliens were right when they considered man a savage. Like the
savage, man didn't realize his most valuable possession was his land!

The peaceful penetration was what had fooled him. Mankind, faced with
a similar situation, and working from a position of overwhelming
strength would have reacted differently. Humanity would have invaded
and conquered. But the aliens had not even considered this obvious
step.

Why?

The answer was simple and logical. They couldn't! Even though their
technology was advanced enough to exterminate man with little or no
loss to themselves, combat and slaughter must be repulsive to them. It
had to be. With their telepathic minds they would necessarily have a
pathologic horror of suffering. They were so highly evolved that they
simply couldn't fight--at least not with the weapons of humanity. But
they could use the subtler weapon of altruism!

And even more important--uncontrolled emotions were poison to them. In
fact Ixtl had admitted it back in Seattle. The primitive psi waves of
humanity's hates, lusts, fears, and exultations must be unbearable
torture to a race long past such animal outbursts. That was--must
be--why they were moving so fast. For their own safety, emotion had to
be damped out of the human race.

Matson had a faint conception of what the aliens must have suffered
when they first surveyed that crowd at International Airport. No
wonder they looked so strangely immobile at that first contact! The
raw emotion must have nearly killed them! He felt a reluctant stir of
admiration for their courage, for the dedicated bravery needed to face
that crowd and establish a beachhead of tranquility. Those first few
minutes must have had compressed in them the agonies of a lifetime!

Matson grinned coldly. The aliens were not invulnerable. If Mankind
could be taught to fear and hate them, and if that emotion could be
focussed, they never again would try to take this world. It would be
sheer suicide. As long as Mankind kept its emotions it would be safe
from this sort of invasion. But the problem was to teach Mankind to
fear and hate. Shock would do it, but how could that shock be applied?

The thought led inevitably to the only possible conclusion. The aliens
would have to be killed, and in such a manner as to make humanity fear
retaliation from the st